Historic Photos of United States Naval Academy

Summary

With a proud tradition reaching back to its founding in 1845, the United States Naval Academy today pursues its role as the nation’s premier institution dedicated to teaching and molding the naval leaders of tomorrow. Graduates of the academy include famous athletes, fleet commanders of the world wars, and astronauts. Great Americans like George Dewey, Chester W. Nimitz, and Alan B. Shepard are but a few of the many graduates whose contributions to the defense and dexterity of the United States are legendary. In stunning black-and-white photography, Historic Photos of United States Naval Academy tours the institution from its earliest days up to recent times, encapsulating its history in nearly 200 images from the storehouse of the academy, the Library of Congress, and other key archives. Through captions and essays, author James Cheevers does commendable work recounting the story of this unique school, pivotal to maintaining the nation’s naval supremacy on the seven seas.

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Historic Photos of United States Naval Academy - James W. Cheevers

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HISTORIC PHOTOS OF

UNITED STATES

NAVAL ACADEMY

TEXT AND CAPTIONS BY JAMES W. CHEEVERS

A main thoroughfare in the New Naval Academy, then and now, is a divided sidewalk named for the third Superintendent, Cornelius K. Stribling, connecting the dormitory complex, Bancroft Hall, and the academic buildings centered on Mahan Hall. For generations, units of midshipmen marched along this brick walk to and from nearly all their classes. In the median strip along the way are three important monuments: the figurehead of USS Delaware (also known as Tecumseh), the Mexican War Monument, and the Macedonian Monument.

HISTORIC PHOTOS OF

UNITED STATES

NAVAL ACADEMY

This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007936867

ISBN-13: 978-1-59652-418-7

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-68336-995-0 (hc)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

FROM FORT SEVERN TO FORT ADAMS (1845–1865)

THE POST–CIVIL WAR PERIOD (1866–1894)

THE NEW NAVAL ACADEMY: A GOLDEN AGE FOR ANNAPOLIS (1895–1947)

MODERN TIMES (1948–1990S)

AFTERWORD

NOTES ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As World War II progressed, the Regiment of Midshipmen grew larger and the dormitory, classrooms, and laboratories became more crowded. At times, four lived in a room designed for two.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No one deserves more credit for this volume than the photographers who used the equipment and their talents to take and to process the pictures. This work is dedicated to them. Like many photos of public institutions, which are copied over and over, not all the pictures found and used may be properly credited to the artist. It is known that a few are the work of two illustrious geniuses, Mathew B. Brady (1823-96) and Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952). Some dating from the mid-1940s were credited to a Chief Jorgensen, who was clearly an active-duty sailor sent to the academy at the time by the Navy’s Chief of Information to provide pictures to help celebrate the U.S. Naval Academy’s 100th anniversary.

Of particularly valuable service to me over the past 40 years have been the professionals of the U.S. Naval Academy Photography Laboratory, who have captured and preserved, and continue to do so, a visual record of the school, its people, and its events. They are Jack Moore, David Eckard, Ken Mierzejewski, Wayne McCrea, Cliff Maxwell, Shannon O’Connor, and Gin Kai. They are among the unsung heroes who make it possible for us to remember and to study our past.

Turner Publishing has done a considerable amount of research for this book at two of the nation’s premier storehouses of knowledge, the Library of Congress and the National Archives, whose employees again are often unrecognized for their outstanding abilities and the many hours they devote to helping fellow citizens.

A hardy thank you, too, to all the midshipmen, alumni, faculty, and all the employees of the U.S. Naval Academy, from the Superintendents to the housekeepers, who over the years have kept the questions on the school’s history flowing. They have provided a fantastic learning experience, without which the information researched and recorded here would not have been uncovered. The mind is fallible and I appreciate receiving corrections to any unintended errors or misconceptions that may have crept in.

—James W. Cheevers

Annapolis, Maryland, 2008

PREFACE

The people, buildings, and grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy have changed so much during its existence we are fortunate that its history has coincided with that of photography. Cameras have provided an excellent record of the school’s students, faculty, staff, classrooms, laboratories, infantry and artillery drills, parades, athletic contests, monuments, training ships, architecture, topography, and even its mascots and trees. Very little was left to the whims of artistic license. Indeed, the dearth of artistic renderings of the academy’s personnel and architecture painted on canvas, drawn on paper, or etched for a graphic medium may stem from the fact that the academy’s entire development has been captured through the lenses of cameras. There is a generous collection of photographs, tens of thousands of them, in the U.S. Naval Academy Archives and in other repositories such as the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Naval Historical Center Photographic Branch.

None of the original buildings of the Naval Academy have survived. The academy’s infrastructure was completely razed and new construction undertaken between 1899 and 1908. Even some of the buildings from the early twentieth century have now disappeared in the name of progress. Contemporaneous photographs are the best means to recall and to study the appearance and workings of the old school. Through these pictures we can see what the academy was like in the student days of George Dewey, NA Class of 1858, and Alfred Thayer Mahan, NA Class of 1859; when the future naval leaders of World War I walked the yard in the 1880s; and when the Spanish-American War was fought in 1898. Incidentally, the first-known motion picture film shot in Maryland showed the arrival of Spanish prisoners of war at the Naval Academy on July 15, 1898, but that is a subject for another book. I hope that you enjoy this photographic journey through the past, from the earliest days of the academy to recent times.

The mission of the United States Naval Academy is to develop midshipmen morally, mentally, and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor, and loyalty in order to provide graduates who are dedicated to a career of naval service and have potential for future development in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship, and government.

The name came from ancient Greece, where Aristotle taught: the lyceum was among the first attempts at adult education in America. They were membership organizations that brought aboard speakers and collected books and souvenirs their members had acquired on the frontier and on their foreign travels. The first U.S. Naval Lyceum had been established at the New York Navy Yard in 1834. Its collections were later transferred to what is now the U.S. Naval Academy Museum. The first known ship models at the academy arrived in 1854 and were exhibited in this room. After the Civil War, the Mess Hall and Library-Lyceum building became the Seamanship Department for the remainder of the nineteenth century.

FROM FORT SEVERN TO FORT ADAMS

(1845–1865)

The United States Naval Academy formally opened at 11:00 A.M., Friday, October 10, 1845, when Commander Franklin Buchanan read a letter from Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft and the rules and regulations for the internal government of the naval